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Cord-Cutting in America May Have Already Peaked (fool.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Motley Fool:
Cord-cutting has been a massive thorn in the side of pay-TV distributors and television media companies for nearly a decade. After U.S. pay-TV subscribers peaked in 2010 at 105 million households, about 14 million homes have cut the cord, according to a report from Digital TV Research. The trend has only accelerated in recent years. 2018 saw nearly double the amount of cord-cutting over 2017, according to Leichtman Research.
But 2018 might've been the pay-TV industry's worst year for cord-cutting. The U.S. will lose fewer pay-TV subscribers this year than last, according to Digital TV Research. And the research firm suggests annual losses will continue to decline next decade.
But 2018 might've been the pay-TV industry's worst year for cord-cutting. The U.S. will lose fewer pay-TV subscribers this year than last, according to Digital TV Research. And the research firm suggests annual losses will continue to decline next decade.
Honestly, when pay-TV refers to the old pay-TV companies and exclude new pay-TV companies, like Netflix and Hulu, then this way to count customers is bonkers. This is like when you have one bakery in a town which sells all the bread and you count how much bread and rolls they sell. Then a new second bakery opens, but you still count only the products from the first bakery. Suddenly people by less bread. And before you tell me that Netflix is not pay-TV. It is you watch it and you pay for it. Yes it is not linear and there is no classic programming. So what? It is just the modern form of pay-TV.
My 74 year old mother just cut the cord from AT&T/DirecTV to playstation vue. No she doesn't have a playstation. anyway her cost dropped from 125/mnth to 60/mnth. That was the driver for her to switch. If the AT&Ts and Comcasts of the world keep gouging people then the exodus will continue. I guess I should follow her lead and drop DirecTV also but i haggle with them every 6 months to year to keep my price down to $64/mnth so I guess it's no rush. She was done with the haggling and just had enough. she still struggles to use the app and chromecast but she's determined stick to the man so she's getting the hang of it.
I was out to eat the other day when I overheard a lady complaining about her cable bill approaching $200. A person at another table told her to dump her cable TV package in favor of Hulu. A person at a 3rd table recommended YouTube TV.
Cable cutting is about to become A LOT more common.
Television means that you watch in realtime some programming that is created at another place (from greek: teleos, far away, and latin: vision, view). And even if the show or movie you are watching was prerecorded, it gets send to all viewers at exactly the same time, so you are still televiewing it, and there is no stop, rewind or anything. If you miss a second, it stays missed, and you can't rewatch it. Netflix, Hulu, Youtube or whatever you call them are totally asynchronous. They are not "far away viewing" something in realtime. You can stop the show and continue at any moment you like.
So stop calling Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, DVDs, pirated movies and shows, etc. TV. Those are the epitomes of Not-TV. All they have in common with TV is that they combine audio- and video signals.
Most people get internet through a wire attached to their residence. Usually it's the very same coax cable that brings in cable TV, and often from the same cable company.
They're not cutting any cords. They are just switching what company is sending their feed through the cord.
(And, amusingly, people who get television by subscribing to DirectTV, which literally does NOT have a cord, but comes in over the satellite dish... are not cord-cutters.)